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Quil shook his head in disgust. “He’s too drunk to be of any use.”
“A little more faith in me, brother.” Sufiyan clapped Quil on the shoulder. “I gave him Iltim. Excellent for headaches. Causes nausea with cheap ale. His friends will assume he’s drunk. He needs to empty his stomach a few times, and then he’ll be ripe for a little interrogation.”
The two followed the stumbling Kegari soldier, and when he finally turned into an alley, Quil and Sufiyan quickened their pace. The prince spotted a large wooden rubbish bin and nodded to it. It stank, but it would hide their activities from anyone passing. Sufiyan, who’d been singing tunelessly, raised his voice, speaking Ankanese.
“Oi—you there. Sky-pig!”
The Kegari soldier spun around, groping for his weapon—which Sufiyan had already relieved him of. Suf shoved the soldier against the wall, a knife at his throat.
“We have some questions.” Quil spoke in Ankanese and pulled his hood low as the rain poured down. His accent was Marinese because that’s where his tutor had been from. All the better to throw the Kegari off. “You’re going to answer them.”
“Rue la ba Tel Ilessi! Kwye asti falli!”
“Speak Ankanese,” Quil snarled, and Sufiyan dug the knife into the man’s neck.
“I don’t speak to Martial-loving snakes,” the Kegari spat. “I will tell you nothing.”
“Oh, but you will, cat bucket.” Sufiyan’s Ankanese was rougher than Quil’s, but when he drew a long line of blood from the man’s throat, his meaning was clear enough.
“How many reserve troops are there?” Quil asked.
The Kegari snarled. “Rue la ba Tel Ilessi!”
Voices echoed from the street beyond the alley. If they turned this way—
“How many reserve troops?” Quil growled.
“Rue la ba Tel Ilessi,” the man whispered, though with fear instead of defiance.
He lunged for Quil, and Sufiyan lifted the dagger in defense, sinking it deep into the man’s throat. Sufiyan jumped back, cursing as the man dropped to his knees, blood waterfalling from his neck. In mere moments, he fell face-first into the mud. Dead.
“Come on.” Quil grabbed Sufiyan as he stared in horror at the dead man. “Move, Sufiyan.”
His friend had never killed anyone. Quil had, of course. Killing didn’t get easier. But nothing was worse than that first time, and Quil wished he’d had the bleeding sense to consider that before he’d dragged Sufiyan into the streets of Jibaut.
“Suf, walk.” Ahead of them, near the next cross street, the group of people they’d heard talking hurried past, unaware of the body stepsaway. Sufiyan’s gaze was wild, his hands shaking as he lurched back from the pool of blood spreading beneath the body.
“Walk!”
They made it to the end of the alley and through the nearly empty square on the other side. A Kegari patrol approached, blue armor flashing in the rain, but Quil and Sufiyan were out of sight before the soldiers could call out.
Quil wanted to punch a wall. They’d failed to get information and killed a man—for nothing at all. Best to cut their losses, get the supplies, and get the hells out of Jibaut.
Most cities had order to them—neighborhoods, business districts, markets, and squares. But Jibaut was laid out willy-nilly, as if a child playing with blocks had spilled them all at once and called it a city. Quil took a dozen wrong turns past dilapidated neighborhoods half-overtaken by the forest, shuttered shops, and a crowded shipbuilding yard before lights blazed ahead and voices echoed. A night market.
The market took up both sides of a wide boulevard and was packed so full of hooded buyers that Quil worried less about being recognized as Martial, and more that he and Sufiyan wouldn’t be able to shove their way through. The thick flow of humanity hardly noticed the rain. Merchants beneath canvas tarps sold their goods with shrill vigor; tavern rats spilled into the crowded streets, ales in hand.
“An apothecary.” Sufiyan nodded to a building a hundred feet away, its mortar and pestle sign illuminated by a sputtering lamp. “Let’s get the willadonna.”
Sufiyan’s voice was flat, like it had been after Quil had found Ruh. Like after Karinna—Sufiyan’s fifteen-year-old sister—had screamed at her big brother,You were supposed to watch him!
“Suf—”
His friend whirled on him. “I don’t want to talk about it!” Sufiyan snarled. “He was going to kill us. I beat him to it. Your aunt did it athousand times in the war. So did my parents. And you—in the border skirmishes. How old were you? Thirteen? I’m eighteen, for skies’ sake.”
“That’swhyI’m bringing it up. Aunt Helene talked to me about it, and it helped.”
Sufiyan pushed ahead and Quil wanted to leave him be. He didn’t want to fight with Sufiyan, least of all while hurrying through crowds of Jibaut’s denizens, many of whom would happily sell them to the Kegari for the price of an evening meal.
